Question: Stephanie is 12 years older than Ashley. Eight years ago, Stephanie was 3 times as old as Ashley. How old is Ashley now?
We can use the given information to write down two equations that describe the ages of Stephanie and Ashley. Let Stephanie's current age be $s$ and Ashley's current age be $a$ The information in the first sentence can be expressed in the following equation: $s = a + 12$ Eight years ago, Stephanie was $s - 8$ years old, and Ashley was $a - 8$ years old. The information in the second sentence can be expressed in the following equation: $s - 8 = 3(a - 8)$ Now we have two independent equations, and we can solve for our two unknowns. Because we are looking for $a$ , it might be easiest to use our first equation for $s$ and substitute it into our second equation. Our first equation is: $s = a + 12$ . Substituting this into our second equation, we get the equation: $(a + 12)$ $-$ $8 = 3(a - 8)$ which combines the information about $a$ from both of our original equations. Simplifying both sides of this equation, we get: $a + 4 = 3 a - 24$ Solving for $a$ , we get: $2 a = 28$ $a = 14$.